The Oldest Code of Laws in the World eBook

A great space, some 700 lines, is devoted by the king
to setting out his titles, his glory, his care for
his subjects, his veneration of his gods, and incidentally
revealing the cities and districts under his rule,
with many interesting hints as to local cults.
He also invokes blessing on those who should preserve
and respect his monument, and curses those who should
injure or remove it. A translation of this portion
is not given, as it is unintelligible without copious
comment and is quite foreign to the purpose of this
book, which aims solely at making the Code intelligible.

I desire to express my obligations to Dr. F. Carr
for his many kind suggestions as to the meaning of
the Code.

The Index will, it is hoped, serve more or less as
a digest of the Code. One great difficulty of
any translation of a law document must always be that
the technical expressions of one language cannot be
rendered in terms that are co-extensive. The
rendering will have implications foreign to the original.
An attempt to minimise misconceptions is made by
suggesting alternative renderings in the Index.
Further, by labelling a certain section, as the law
of incest, for example, one definitely fixes the sense
in which the translation is to be read. Hence
it is hoped that the Index will be no less helpful
than the translation in giving readers an idea of
what the Code really meant.

No doubt this remarkable monument will be made the
subject of many valuable monographs in the future,
which will greatly elucidate passages now obscure.
But it was thought that the interest of the subject
warranted an immediate issue of an English translation,
which would place the chief features of the Code before
a wider public than those who could read the original.
The present translation is necessarily tentative in
many places, but it is hoped marks an advance over
those already published.

Dr. H. Winckler’s rendering of the Code came
into my hands after this work was sent to the publishers,
and I have not thought it necessary to withdraw any
of my renderings. In some points he has improved
upon Professor Scheil’s work, in other points
he is scarcely so good. But any discussion is
not in place here. I gratefully acknowledge my
obligations to both, but have used an independent
judgment all through. I hope shortly to set
out my reasons for the differences between us in a
larger work. A few of Dr. Winckler’s renderings
are quoted in the Index, and marked—­Winckler’s
tr.

C. H. W. Johns.

Cambridge,January 31, 1903.

THE TEXT OF THE CODE

section 1. If a man weave a spell and put a
ban upon a man, and has not justified himself, he
that wove the spell upon him shall be put to death.

section 2. If a man has put a spell upon a man,
and has not justified himself, he upon whom the spell
is laid shall go to the holy river, he shall plunge
into the holy river, and if the holy river overcome
him, he who wove the spell upon him shall take to
himself his house. If the holy river makes that
man to be innocent, and has saved him, he who laid
the spell upon him shall be put to death. He
who plunged into the holy river shall take to himself
the house of him who wove the spell upon him.